19 Nov 2025 · 8 min
Bob Gauvreau argues that profit is the foundation of everything else a business wants to do. Without it, you can't hire, reinvest, or build products that matter. He walks through why maximizing profitability first makes team building and impact actually possible.
If you don't focus on profit as your number one priority in your business, you are selfish. Why? Good day, everybody, and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. My name is Bob Goverill. I will be your host for the day. And guess what? We're going to talk about something that I believe was seen as a little bit controversial. So I wrote the book the Wealthy Entrepreneur. Feel free to check it out online at Amazon if you want to buy it, but stay tuned and I'm going to give it to you for free. So wait, hang on, check that out. But what I actually want to talk about in the book was essentially a policy that I want to make for every business owner. And I'm going to say this, and I want you guys to hear me out because when it comes out of my mouth, a lot of people are going, Bob, that I don't agree, but hear me out and I'm going to explain why this 100% is the case for you and your business. And if you can focus on this, you're going to change more lives and make a greater impact than anything else in your business. Are you ready for this? Okay, here we go. It is 100% your number one priority in your business to maximize your profits. This needs to be your number one focus as an entrepreneur, as a business owner is to maximize your profitability beyond anything else. The number one thing you have to focus on is making the most amount of money possible. Now, a lot of people will go, well, Bob, that's not really what I'm about. I'm about maximizing my impact. I'm about, you know, making a difference in people's lives. I'm about building a team. Great. But the number one priority in your business needs to be that you focus on maximizing your profits. So here, hear me out on this. If you're building a business and you're not focused on profitability, if you don't have a profitable business at all, your business is not sustainable. And any other objective that you have, building a team, building a business, making an impact, creating a change, developing a product, all of that goes out the window if you do not have a profitable and sustainable business. Why? Because you cannot afford to continue to carry on. The banks only give you so much money. You know, you think of startup companies that come out of the gates, they don't necessarily have a product. They're developing a product. Eventually, if they don't start bringing in revenue inside their business, their business is going to stop because funds are going to run out. The banks and investors will eventually stop contributing to the success of this startup if we don't get revenue. Revenue is a driver of profitability. If we don't have revenue, we can't build a profit. Revenue is important. If you don't have profitability in your business, you cannot maximize your impact. Listen for me, my mission is to empower entrepreneurs just like you with confidence in financial information so that you can make informed decisions. And ultimately, together with that information and your effective decision making, we can change the world. That is my mission. My number one output that I'm trying to create is creating an impact in the world, helping you create an impact in the world. However, the number one priority in my business has to be maximizing profitability. Here's another reason why. If I make $100,000 a year, if money isn't a priority, if it doesn't mean anything to me, if I don't need that $100,000, I can reinvest all of that money back into building a team, back into reinvesting in a better product, a better service, a better experience. I can reinvest this in new technology so that I can again continue to impact more people. But if I don't have profitability, I can't do that. In essence, I'm going to turn this whole thing around and I'm going to say if you don't focus on profit as your number one priority in your business, you are selfish. I'm going to say that again because sometimes it's not easy to hear, but if you don't focus on profit in your business, you are selfish. Why? Well, if you don't have profit, you can't reinvest. If you can't reinvest, you can't help more people. Right? If I make a million dollars this year and I want to reinvest all of that million dollars, I can likely build a team of 10 more people which allow those 10 people to reach even more people, allow me to bring my service, my product into the market at a 10 times bigger scale than just be. And if I'm not focusing on profit, I can't do that. Selfishly, I'm taking my impact away from the world. If I want to continue to create a team, I have to focus on profit. If profit isn't there, I can't give raises, I can't impact the lives of those that are serving with me on my team. If there's not enough profitability there, I can't do that. I. I can't continue to hire, I can't continue to Reinvest so selfishly. If I'm not focused on profits, I'm taking our impact away from the world. Now it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have an ulterior motive. Making profit is a really great idea, right? It could be impacting the lives of you and your family. Building intergenerational wealth, super important. You know, I want to make sure that my kids are taken care of when their kids are taken care of. People have different philosophies on how that should work. I actually like Kevin O. Leary's philosophy. I was just listening to this the other day. Kevin o' Leary said that he had a trust fund that was available to him. And if you hear anything about trust fund kids, sometimes they seem a little spoiled, maybe a lack of motivation because they know that essentially they've been given everything to take care of them financially for their life. But he said that he had access to a trust fund that paid for everything up until the day school was over. So the day his school was over, no more money in his life. If the trust fund was still available and there were, there were monies in there, there were dollars in there, they went to charity. No more into his life or to cover expenses or investments or anything for his future. The investment in him was to create the opportunity for him to get educated and learn and gain that experience so that he could go and create his own life. He wasn't dependent on anything else. So you know, a little bit of a sidetrack there. But thinking about that profit, I want that profit to be able to create that opportunity for my kids so I can have intergenerational wealth again. You can set up a trust or something like that that allows you to, ultimately it allows you to pay for your kids education, experience, whatever that looks like. But back to profits. If I want to continue to build a team out, if I want to maximize my impact, profit has to be the number one priority. I challenge you to argue anything else. If you focus on impact alone and not profitability, yes, maybe it will help get your profitability. But if you focus on profitability first, you will be able to maximize your impact without question. If you focus on profitability first, it will allow you to reinvest in your team and change the lives of them and their families. If you focus on profit first, it will allow you to reinvest in technology and opportunity and ultimately changing the world. So as a conclusion, if you didn't hear me the first time, as a business owner, as a wealthy entrepreneur, if you want to create a world that's better than how it was when you first started. If you want to maximize your impact, if you want to build a team, if you want to change the lives of the most amount of people, if you want to create intergenerational wealth, the number one focus you need in your business is to focus on making a profit. Now, for those of you who are interested in learning more about how to make a profit, and you want a copy of my book, the Wealthy Entrepreneur, we're going to put a link in here for you to be able to download that, get access to a PDF of it. This is a fantastic book. Wrote this ultimately to help entrepreneurs have a framework to understand how to get from where you are now to achieving financial mastery in your life. So check out that book. Would love for you to have that. If you like this episode, I would love for you to like the podcast, follow the podcast, share the episodes out, leave a comment, Whatever it is, I'm ultimately here to help support you as an entrepreneur to become the wealthy entrepreneur and create a life of financial freedom for you and your family. Thank you so much for checking it out today guys. Have a fantastic day and we'll check you next time.
