Why doubling revenue doesn't mean doubling profit: the five levers that actually move the needle
Photo by David Birozy on Unsplash
You've doubled your revenue this year. Congratulations are in order, surely? But when your financial director mentions that operating profit has barely shifted — up just 2% — the champagne suddenly feels premature. This uncomfortable scenario plays out in boardrooms across the professional services sector more often than leaders care to admit.
Jeremy Williams, founder of Stratus Coach and exited agency owner who sold his B2B marketing business for £11m, has sat in enough of those rooms to recognise the pattern. His work with organisations from the Financial Times to Premier League football clubs has revealed a fundamental truth about innovation in professional services: chasing revenue growth without systematic profit management is like spinning your wheels twice as fast to go nowhere.
In his conversation on That Moment podcast, Jeremy dismantles the revenue-obsessed mindset that traps scaling businesses — and offers a roadmap for leaders ready to work smarter, not just harder.
Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity
"There's a famous phrase, right. The first bit of which is turnover is vanity," Jeremy explains. "But we all do that. It's the bit that we love to talk about in an RFI or an RFP or in a pitch or in our creds. Look at the size of my turnover."
This boasting rights mentality pervades professional services, particularly amongst sales-driven leaders. But here's the rub: turnover tells you precisely nothing about your underlying business health.
"Why would you spin your wheels twice as fast to double your turnover, but only get a 2% or a 10% improvement in your operating profit?" Jeremy asks. "You've made your life a lot harder, had to get a lot more people, but the profitability goals aren't following."
The second part of that phrase? Profit is sanity — it's what actually helps you sleep at night. The third part matters even more: cash is reality. Because you can still go out of business from lack of cash, regardless of impressive revenue figures. This financial reality underpins every successful transformation in professional services growth.
The fatal fix: why hiring another salesperson won't save you
Jeremy has witnessed this scenario countless times: an owner with good revenue but disappointing profitability declares that next year, they'll simply hire a great business development person. Problem solved, right?
"Hold on on that view," Jeremy advises. "I think you need to look at the five levers."
This knee-jerk solution — throwing money at sales talent hoping to fix profitability problems — rarely works. It didn't work last time, and that person either left or failed to deliver. Yet leaders keep making the same mistake because they're looking for a silver bullet rather than systematic improvement in change management.
The five levers model: marginal gains, exponential results
Here's where Jeremy's approach transforms business transformation in professional services. Instead of one massive, scary improvement, what if you could deliver 50% greater sales and 50% greater profitability with the same structure and people?
The secret: five marginal improvements of just 10% each.
"If I said to you, can you improve something by 10%? Does that sound scary?" Jeremy asks. "It doesn't sound like a lot. It's something that you can envisage."
The Five Levers:
1. Leads: Improve the number of quality leads by 10%
2. Conversion Rate: Increase how many leads become clients by 10%
3. Average Project Value: Raise your typical project size by 10%
4. Purchase Frequency: Get clients buying more often — from 10 times to 11 times per year
5. Margin: Achieve a 10% margin increase through better time recovery and rate cards
Each lever requires you to know your metrics. But when you apply creativity, focus, and systematic thinking across all five areas simultaneously, the multiplier effect delivers results that hiring another salesperson never could. This approach represents a fundamental shift in how leaders think about driving growth in professional services.
The lever most leaders ignore
When asked which lever leaders struggle with most, Jeremy doesn't hesitate: average project value.
"There's often times when I ask the question, someone says, well, I don't know. And I don't want to know or I don't need to because it's not relevant for me," he reveals. This resistance matters because things that get measured get done.
This metric matters particularly for scaling businesses. Acquirers want agencies doing £15,000 projects, not £5,000 ones. Higher average project values signal strategic relationships with bigger clients — the kind that scale.
The challenge often comes down to discipline: saying no to small projects at low prices because your eyes are fixed on bigger brands and recognisable clients. That long tail of very small customers? It's expensive to administrate individual small accounts, and it's quietly killing your profitability.
From comedy stage to boardroom: the art of authentic leadership
Jeremy's journey into stand-up comedy wasn't about becoming a performer — it was about confronting the "level boss of presenting fears" to develop a looser, more authentic leadership style.
"It's a looseness which you get. You're not consciously trying to do it," he explains. The experience taught him something crucial: authentic leadership under pressure translates directly to better business outcomes.
But authenticity goes deeper than presentation style. Jeremy challenges leaders to answer uncomfortable questions: What's your personal purpose as an individual? What's the deeper societal purpose of your business? Where do you derive your sense of meaning from work?
"If you can't derive where your sense of meaning is in work, how are you going to tell that to others?" he asks. "How are you going to tell that story to the millennials or to the Gen Z's that you need to hire?"
This connects to client engagement strategies as well — when you understand your own values and purpose, you can articulate why clients should work with you beyond transactional deliverables.
The preparation paradox
One of the leadership challenges Jeremy explores is preparation — specifically, finding the balance between being ready and being paralysed.
"Has your business got the right levels of preparation for what it needs to be in the future?" he asks. "Are you pedalling so fast that you're going to every meeting unprepared, that you're showing up at one-to-ones or cancelling the one-to-ones with your people?"
Good reflection through preparation matters. But there's a dangerous flip side: rumination, or too much reflection. This leads to analysis paralysis — that state where you've thought about something so much that you wake up every morning thinking "I still haven't dealt with that. If only I get this bit more information."
The balance between no preparation and too much determines whether you're driving systematic change or simply reacting to whatever comes next.
The metric no one tracks (but should)
In a rapid-fire segment, Jeremy reveals the metric that should matter to every agency: LSC as a percentage of AGI. Translation: loaded staff costs (salary plus on-costs and other employment costs) as a percentage of adjusted gross income.
The magic range? Between 55% and 65%.
This single metric tells you whether your professional services profitability model is fundamentally healthy or quietly broken.
The worst advice CEOs still believe
"Leading from the front is always the right thing to do," Jeremy identifies as one of the most damaging myths in professional services leadership. "I think that, you know, all you've got to do is you do it and others will follow. And that's definitely not the case."
It's right in two scenarios: crisis times and turnaround situations. But treating every business challenge like a crisis creates exhaustion without results. Sometimes the best leadership means building systems that work without you leading every charge.
The one thing you can do tomorrow
When pressed for the single action any business leader can take to improve profitability, Jeremy's answer surprises: "Be open to talking to someone about it."
"Sometimes we can get a bit wrapped up in our own hubris," he admits. "We think that everything that got us to where we are is enough to get us forward."
His advice: be resourceful, find someone who can help you, and crucially, don't fight the feedback. Many owners immediately counter any suggestion for improvement with reasons why it won't work.
"Don't fight the feedback. Take the medicine and talk to someone else because it is lonely at the top," Jeremy reflects. "I think we need somebody else often to help us make a change or make improvements to see our blind spots."
Moving forward: systematic thinking over silver bullets
The conversation with Jeremy Williams reveals what separates businesses that scale profitably from those that simply scale: systematic thinking. The Five Levers model offers a framework for innovation in professional services that doesn't require massive capital investment or risky hires — just disciplined focus on marginal improvements that compound.
Revenue growth means nothing if profit doesn't follow. But when you understand the levers that actually drive profitability, you stop spinning your wheels and start building a business that works for you rather than against you.
As professional services firms face increasing pressure to demonstrate value beyond traditional deliverables, the ability to manage both growth and profitability becomes the defining factor between firms that thrive and those that merely survive.
Ready to discover which of the five levers your business is missing?
Listen to the full episode with Jeremy Williams and learn how systematic improvements deliver exponential results — no new sales hire required.
About Supo:
Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people.
For more information about Supo: www.supo.co.uk
About Jeremy Williams:
Jeremy Williams is the founder of Stratus Coach, a marketing agency coach, executive coach, and Non-Executive Director. As an exited agency owner who built and sold his B2B marketing services business for £11m, Jeremy now helps agencies with turnaround, profitability, and rapid growth. He's a faculty speaker for the FT Board Director Programme and works with leaders in business and elite football. When he's not analyzing profit margins, you might find him perfecting his stand-up comedy routine as an "average stand-up comedian" by his own admission.
For more information about Stratus Coach: www.stratuscomms.com