Additive Impact – Stack 2–3 Changes to Create Six-Figure Profit Lifts

I have this tool I like to share with people that shows the cumulative effect of making incremental changes to a few different things. Improve your client mix by 10%, raise specific prices by 5%, reduce costs by 10% … and you could be looking at double your profit.

Double!

If you’re not currently scrambling to find the previous emails on client mix, pricing, and cost reductions right now … don’t worry. I’ll wait. Go ahead.

Now, hopefully, you see the power of what we’ve been talking about for the last ten weeks. Sure, you have a bunch of ways to add $25K to your bottom line but if you combine them … if you let them build off of each other.

Hot diggity! Am I right?

Everything compounds. A higher percentage of your ideal clients means more profitable people, more energy, and likely lower costs associated with them. Aligning pricing with your branding and your overall strategy, can provide even more incentives for ideal clients and possibly even convert ill-fitting ones into ideal. Reducing costs and driving efficiency means everyone costs less, which means higher margins, less waste. Refined marketing means more people coming through the door, trickling through your funnel … multiplying the effects of everything even further.

Increasing retention. Increasing conversion rates. Better use of time.

Everything’s coming up roses.

A fictional example

Meet Luis. (Hi Luis!) He runs a 5-person financial planning firm with a strong local reputation and a solid book of business.

Like many firm owners, he chased just one more good month. Revenue looked healthy on paper, but it never seemed to translate into a bigger cushion or less stress. It didn’t feel like he was living the life he’d seen in the brochures and he couldn’t figure out where he went wrong.

After focusing his efforts, working through a few planning sessions, Luis didn’t overhaul the business.

He made three specific shifts:

• He raised fees by 10% for new clients and packaged services more clearly
• He trimmed a few clients who were chronically late, demanding, or simply not a good fit
• He restructured his team’s calendar to reduce rework and overlapping redundancy

None of those were massive changes on their own. But together, they multiplied.

Margins improved. Time freed up. He had more room to think, plan, and serve. And for the first time, profit wasn’t just theoretical it showed up in the bank account. (Hi Profit!)

The math

Let’s use our favorite baseline: a $1M/year service firm.

If your current profit margin is 10%, that means $100,000 in profit. Not bad but not where you want to stay.

Now let’s say you do three things:

• Improve your client mix by 10% (more high-margin clients, fewer low-value distractions)
• Increase pricing on targeted services by 5%
• Reduce cost of delivery by 10% through process refinement or better team allocation

Individually, each of these shifts might only improve margin by a few percentage points. But together, they don’t add … they multiply.

Let’s do some quick math:

• New revenue = $1,050,000 (from the 5% pricing bump)
• New cost = 90% of previous cost (from delivery savings)
• And that 10% mix shift? It boosts average margin on the work itself

When you run the numbers, those three tweaks—none of them huge on their own—can easily double your profit, moving you from $100K to $200K or more.

Not by doubling your revenue.
By multiplying your return on the work you’re already doing.

That’s the power of aligned strategy.

Action prompt

Go back through the last 10 posts.

Which ones made you pause?

Which ones made you think “That’s doable” or “That’s me”?

Now ask yourself:

If you picked two of those ideas and made meaningful changes… where would you be in 6 months?

What if you did three?

There is no silver bullet, or panacea to cure all that ails your business. But this will definitely build some momentum and help hone that focus one change at a time.

Strategy Session

If you’re not sure where to start or how to sequence the right changes for your business let’s talk.

Schedule a 20-minute Strategy Session.

We’ll look at where your biggest opportunities lie, and how a few well-placed improvements could add up to something big.