Why your business is leaking profit and how to stop it

Most business owners have a simple belief: more sales equals more profit. It sounds logical. It feels obvious. And according to business coach and author Steve Jones, it is also one of the most dangerous assumptions you can make.

In episode 7 of Speak Your Own Business, Kiana Douglin sat down with Steve Jones, founder of Skills for Business Training and author of Turning on Your P.R.O.F.I.T.S. Tap, for a conversation that challenges some of the most common thinking around business growth. If you have ever worked hard to grow your revenue and still found yourself wondering where the money went, this one is for you.

Profit is not an outcome: It is a system

The central idea running through Steve's book is deceptively simple: profit does not just happen. It is designed.

Too many businesses treat profit as the natural by-product of growth, something that shows up automatically once the sales are coming in. But Steve argues that this thinking is precisely why so many businesses stay stuck. Profit, done properly, is the result of clarity, alignment, and deliberate planning. Without those foundations, growth can actually make things worse, not better.

"Businesses do not have a sales problem or a cost problem," Steve explains. "They have a clarity and alignment problem."

This reframe alone is worth sitting with. Before you hire another salesperson or cut another expense, it is worth asking whether your team, your strategy, and your daily decisions are all pointing in the same direction.

Are you leaking profit without realising it?

One of the most powerful concepts in the book is the idea of businesses "leaking profit", quietly haemorrhaging money through inefficiencies that are invisible from the outside.

A business can look healthy on the surface...busy team, growing client list, strong revenue, and still be losing money in ways that never show up until it is too late. Some of the most common culprits include:

• Underpricing services and poor market positioning.
• Taking on the wrong clients who drain time and resource.
• Over-delivering without building the margin to sustain it.
• Internal inefficiencies that compound quietly over time.
• A lack of financial visibility...not knowing your numbers well enough to act on them.

The uncomfortable truth is that many business owners are working harder than ever and inadvertently making their profit problem worse, not better.

The P.R.O.F.I.T.S. framework

To help businesses move from reactive chaos to proactive profit planning, Steve developed the P.R.O.F.I.T.S. framework; a structured approach to building sustainable profit into the way a business operates, rather than hoping it appears at the end of the year.

The framework connects strategy, leadership behaviour, and financial performance in a way that is practical and actionable, not just theoretical. Rather than chasing quick wins, it is designed to help business owners build something consistent and repeatable.

Steve's advice for where to start? Focus on clarity first. Before you can align your team, sharpen your pricing, or improve your margins, you need to be crystal clear on what you are actually trying to build, and why.

From firefighting to profit planning

Perhaps the most relatable part of the conversation was Steve's description of businesses in "firefighting mode", permanently reactive, always dealing with the latest crisis, never quite getting ahead.

It is a pattern that almost every business owner will recognise at some point. And the shift away from it is not just about better systems or smarter tools. It is a mindset change. It is the decision to stop letting the business run you and start running the business with intention.

That shift is what separates businesses that grow sustainably from those that stay permanently exhausted.

Key takeaways

If you take nothing else from this episode, take these:

• Growth and profit are not the same thing, you need to design for both.
• Start by identifying where your business might be leaking profit right now.
• Clarity and alignment within your team matters more than most business owners realise.
• Profit should be a deliberate, repeatable process, not a pleasant surprise.

Listen to the full episode

You can watch the full conversation with Steve Jones on YouTube, or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major audio platforms.

Turning on Your P.R.O.F.I.T.S. Tap by Steve Jones is available now. If this episode resonated with you, the book goes significantly deeper and is well worth adding to your reading list. Order the book here.

This is the first in a series of episodes with Steve. Subscribe to Plenty of Stuff Studio's YouTube channel so you do not miss what is coming next.

Share

Written by Kiana Douglin

Written on Thursday, 4 June 2026

Kiana Douglin

Director, Plenty of Stuff Studio

Kiana draws on years of marketing experience, playing a key role in helping businesses grow and launching startups with effective marketing strategies and operations. Her background combines marketing expertise with skills in sales and events. Outside of work, she finds inspiration in nature-hiking in the mountains, chasing waterfalls, and traveling the world-while her love for poetry and music fuels her creative spirit.

Read more about our marketing team.

Read more