A client ran a fast-growing service company.
Revenue looked strong.
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Clients were happy.
Team was working nonstop.
But the founder still couldn’t consistently:
- pay themselves on time
- plan hiring without anxiety
- stop checking the bank account daily
The issue wasn’t effort. It was structure.
They priced projects “to win”.
Then delivery took longer than planned.
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Then extra work got added “to keep the relationship”.
Margin leaked quietly on every job.
So we rebuilt the business around one number: contribution margin per project.
What we did:
- Created a simple job margin model
- Revenue – direct labor – contractors – delivery tools = true contribution margin.
- Standardized scope + change orders
- Anything outside the baseline scope became a priced add-on. No free extras.
- Introduced weekly utilization + capacity planning
- Not as HR control. As a cash control system. If utilization drops, cash drops.
Outcome: projects became predictable, pricing stopped being emotional, and the founder started paying themselves monthly without surprises.
Founder takeaway: if you can’t pay yourself reliably, you don’t have a revenue problem. You have a delivery economics problem.