Your Business Is Probably Paying for Things It Doesn't Need Anymore

Writing the world from Omaha, Nebraska! Here's a question that could be worth more to your business than landing another customer this month:

What are you still doing simply because you've always done it?

Not what are you spending.

What are you doing?

The meeting nobody needs anymore.

The report nobody reads.

The software somebody signed up for three years ago.

The approval that takes four people.

The service you barely make money on.

The customer exception your entire team has to remember.

The employee manually entering information that could have been automated years ago.

Businesses are constantly adding things.

Very few become equally disciplined about removing them.

And after enough years, all those little additions create something expensive:

Complexity.

Growth Has a Hidden Tax

When you're starting a company, things are usually pretty simple.

A few customers.

A few employees.

A few services.

Everybody knows what's happening.

Then the company grows.

You add another service.

Another employee.

Another manager.

Another software platform.

Another approval process.

Another meeting.

Another customer exception.

Another spreadsheet.

Another policy.

Each individual decision makes sense at the time.

That's what makes this dangerous.

Nobody wakes up Monday morning and says:

“Let's make this company unnecessarily complicated.”

Complexity accumulates one reasonable decision at a time.

And eventually you're paying what I call a complexity tax.

The Complexity Tax Is Everywhere

You won't find it as a line item on your P&L.

But you're probably paying it.

You pay it when an employee spends 30 minutes trying to figure out where information is stored.

You pay it when three managers attend a meeting that could have been an email.

You pay it when five people have to approve a $200 decision.

You pay it when your sales team has 14 different offers to explain.

You pay it when a customer needs to speak with four people to solve one problem.

You pay it when employees enter the same information into multiple systems.

You pay it when your team spends more time discussing work than actually doing it.

None of those expenses look catastrophic individually.

That's why they're dangerous.

Complexity usually doesn't kill a business dramatically.

It taxes the business quietly.

Every day.

Here's a Number More Owners Should Know

Most business owners know their revenue.

Many know their payroll.

Some know their margins.

Here's another number I'd want to know:

How many steps does it take to get something important done?

Pick five common activities in your company.

Closing a new customer.

Getting an invoice paid.

Approving an advertisement.

Resolving a customer complaint.

Onboarding a new employee.

Now actually count the steps.

How many people touch it?

How many emails are sent?

How many systems are opened?

How many approvals are required?

How many times is the same information entered?

You may discover something surprising.

The problem isn't that your employees are slow.

Your company made the work slow.

That's an important distinction.

Don't Hire Someone to Fix a Broken Process

This is a gem I wish more owners understood.

When work starts piling up, the immediate reaction is often:

“We need another person.”

Maybe you do.

But before adding another salary, ask:

Why is there so much work?

Sometimes the workload is legitimate.

But sometimes you're about to hire somebody full-time to manage inefficiency.

Imagine an employee spends 15 hours every week transferring information between systems.

The solution might be another employee.

Or the solution might be eliminating the transfer.

That's a completely different economic decision.

Before hiring someone to carry the boxes faster, ask why you're carrying the boxes at all.

Every Exception Creates Operational Interest

This is especially important with customers.

A customer says:

“Can you invoice us differently?”

Sure.

Another wants a custom reporting schedule.

Okay.

Another wants communication through a different platform.

Another wants a modified service.

Another needs a special approval process.

Individually, these accommodations may seem harmless.

But exceptions compound.

Eventually your team isn't operating one business model.

They're operating 30 slightly different versions of one.

That's expensive.

Think about exceptions like debt.

One exception may be manageable.

But enough of them create operational interest.

Your employees have to remember them.

Your managers have to supervise them.

Your systems have to accommodate them.

Your accounting team has to track them.

Your mistakes increase because standardization decreases.

Sometimes saying “yes” to a customer creates expenses you won't recognize until months later.

Your Most Profitable Service Might Not Have the Highest Revenue

Here's another place complexity hides.

Imagine you offer two services.

Service A generates $1 million annually.

Service B generates $600,000.

Most owners automatically assume Service A is more valuable.

But suppose Service A requires:

12 employees.

Constant customer support.

Heavy customization.

Multiple software platforms.

Frequent refunds.

And significant management involvement.

Service B requires:

Four employees.

Standardized delivery.

Minimal customer service.

And produces stronger margins.

Which business would you rather scale?

Revenue alone doesn't answer that question.

That's why business owners should occasionally measure something I call:

Profit per headache.

Not an accounting term.

Still useful.

How much profit does this product, customer or service produce relative to the organizational energy required to deliver it?

Some revenue is incredibly clean.

Some revenue is exhausting.

Know the difference.

Look for the $100 Problems Creating $10,000 Problems

One of the most valuable habits an owner can develop is looking for recurring friction.

If something goes wrong once, it might be a mistake.

If it goes wrong every week, you probably have a system problem.

Your employees repeatedly ask the same question.

That's a clue.

Customers repeatedly misunderstand the same thing.

That's a clue.

Invoices repeatedly require corrections.

That's a clue.

The same approval repeatedly delays projects.

That's a clue.

Employees constantly create their own spreadsheets to track something.

That's a big clue.

Don't just solve the individual incident.

Ask:

“Why does this problem keep getting the opportunity to happen?”

That's where the real money is.

Create a “Stop Doing” Meeting

Most company meetings are about adding things.

New goals.

New campaigns.

New hires.

New initiatives.

New software.

New procedures.

Try holding a completely different meeting once every quarter.

Call it:

The Stop Doing Meeting.

The agenda has one question:

What can we eliminate, simplify, automate or standardize?

Ask your team:

What meeting should disappear?

What report isn't useful?

What approval isn't necessary?

What task should be automated?

What service creates more problems than profit?

What software are we barely using?

What information are we entering twice?

What customer request should become standardized?

What process exists because of a problem that no longer exists?

Then actually remove things.

You might be surprised how much capacity already exists inside your company.

It's just trapped underneath unnecessary work.

Measure Revenue Per Employee

Here's another number worth watching as you grow:

Revenue per employee.

It isn't perfect.

Industries are different.

Job functions are different.

And maximizing it blindly would be a mistake.

But watching the trend can tell you something important.

If your company doubles its employees but revenue barely moves, ask why.

If revenue grows 30% but administrative headcount grows 80%, investigate.

More employees should eventually create more capacity.

If every increase in revenue requires an almost identical increase in complexity and overhead, you may not be building leverage.

You may simply be building a larger workload.

Give Every Process an Expiration Date

Here's something I would implement immediately.

When you create a temporary process, give it a review date.

“We're doing this for 90 days.”

“We'll review this after the campaign.”

“This approval exists until the new system launches.”

Why?

Because temporary processes have an amazing ability to become permanent.

Someone solves an emergency in 2024.

Employees are still following the emergency procedure in 2027.

Nobody remembers why.

That's organizational clutter.

Processes should have to periodically justify their existence just like expenses do.

The Best Businesses Become Easier to Operate as They Grow

This is the real goal.

Growth shouldn't automatically mean chaos.

A great company learns.

Something happens ten times.

You create a process.

The process becomes a system.

The system gets automated.

The automation creates capacity.

That capacity allows the company to grow without increasing effort at exactly the same rate.

That's leverage.

The goal isn't simply:

More customers.

It's:

More customers without proportionally more headaches.

More revenue without proportionally more overhead.

More output without proportionally more complexity.

That's when a company starts becoming powerful.

Before You Add, Subtract

Business owners naturally ask:

What should we launch?

Who should we hire?

What software should we buy?

What market should we enter?

What service should we add?

Those are good questions.

But every once in a while, ask the opposite:

What should disappear?

Some of the biggest improvements you'll ever make won't come from adding another employee, another product, another system or another strategy.

They'll come from finally removing something your company outgrew years ago.

So before you spend another dollar trying to make your business bigger, take a hard look at what you've already built.

You may not need more resources.

You may need fewer obstacles.

Because sometimes the fastest way to grow a business isn't adding something new.

It's removing everything that's making the good parts unnecessarily hard.

— Corey Flores