Brian Kaskavalciyan grew his business to $11 million in revenue but made almost no profit. He argues most business owners chase top-line sales and ignore what actually matters: profit, personal wealth, and the lifestyle it buys. Define your life goals in writing and remind yourself daily.
Now, I for years was like a lot of other contractors. I focused on top line revenue, revenue, revenue. If we sell enough stuff, there's got to be some profit left over somewhere. Then you get to the end of the year and you realize, oh crap, we sold a whole— by— I mean, I grew a business 20 years ago to $11 million. I had a horrible profit model. Horrible. We made no money, but we did $11 million. Today, I don't care about revenue. I don't care how much you sell. I want to know how much you make. I want to know how much you take home. Are you building your personal wealth from your business? So do this instead. Instead of being focused on the top line, instead of being focused on, you know, we're going to talk about planning here in a second. But instead of just saying, well, we did $10 million this year, we're going to do $12 million next year. Really think about what do you want from your life? Like, what do you really, really want in terms of time, money, freedom? Write it down and then create some sort of system to remind yourself every day what you are working for. 4.
