Fund The Runway

We talk a lot about top-line in business - acquisition - LTV - retention - new channels - new markets - new customers. I would never argue that growth does not matter! A healthy top line can fuel the organization. But somewhere along the way, many organizations forget that revenue is only half of the equation.

The real dollars, the ones that quietly strengthen your P&L, often hide in places that don’t show up on a dashboard. Monitoring expenses exposes the slow leaks - vendor and carrier contracts that haven’t been revisited in years. Freight terms that got rolled over because that’s how we’ve always done it. Service levels that exceed the price being paid. Renewals on auto-pilot. Small inefficiencies repeated over and over again.

Everyone celebrates a big new customer win. Fewer celebrate shaving 5, 6, or 7% off a major contract or consolidating spend to unlock real leverage. But those savings drop to the bottom line immediately - no CAC, no nurturing, no months-long ramp.

Top-line growth fuels the future, but bottom-line discipline funds the runway. Great organizations don’t pick one - they build engines that do both. And in a market where every dollar matters, operational rigor isn’t a constraint on growth - it’s a multiplier of it.