🏆 Welcome to This Week’s Profit First Accountant Newsletter!

🕐 Estimated Read Time: 4 Minutes

Hi Everyone,

It’s Stephen Edwards from Gro Profit First Accountants, and welcome to this week’s Profit First Accountant Newsletter.

This week, I want to bring it back to real-world Profit First stories — straight from the fire.

I’ve recently been working with a business that had grown to nearly £1 million in revenue. They built a team of over a dozen people. On the surface, everything looked like success.

For the first few years, it was happy days.

But then came the squeeze.

This is classic over-trading. Revenue grows, the team expands, overheads increase, and the pressure to constantly win new business becomes intense. Margins get tighter. Cash gets tighter. Decision-making becomes reactive rather than strategic.

The numbers ran away from them.

And this is the key point:

I always talk about building a profitable and sustainable business — not just a growing one.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Profit First is that it’s something you implement when you’re struggling.

It isn’t.

In fact, the best time to implement Profit First is when things are going well.

Why?

Because that’s when you can build the habits and systems before pressure hits.

Think about it like health. The NHS largely deals with problems once they exist. But prevention — good habits, discipline, structure — is what keeps you out of trouble in the first place.

If your business is in a good place right now, don’t take it for granted.

That’s the time to:

Because for many businesses, two bad months can be enough to cause serious damage.

One of the biggest benefits of Profit First isn’t just paying yourself more.

It’s building certainty.

When you have:

You operate differently.

You think strategically.

You don’t hire from panic.
You don’t cut staff from fear.
You don’t make decisions from scarcity.

Without reserves, every decision feels stressful.

With reserves, you make calm, deliberate choices.

That’s the difference between reacting and leading.

In this particular case, because the structure wasn’t in place early enough:

We’ve also recently spoken to someone who received a very large surprise tax bill because there had been no proactive tax planning from their previous accountant. They now have to finance that personally and make lifestyle changes to deal with it.

That’s not a position any business owner wants to be in.

But it’s avoidable.

One of the most powerful elements of implementing Profit First properly isn’t just the bank accounts.

It’s the accountability.

When we work with clients one-to-one, we typically meet quarterly. Larger businesses may meet monthly for CFO-style support.

Those regular conversations force you to step back and ask:

If a business trends in the wrong direction for too many months, something must change.

But you can only spot that early if you’re reviewing consistently.

If you’re brand new to Profit First, start small.

Set aside 1% of revenue into a separate profit account.

Build the habit.

But if you want to implement it properly — with the correct percentages for your industry and stage of business — it’s important to get the structure right from the beginning.

Starting with unrealistic percentages can cause unnecessary pressure and make the system feel unsustainable.

Profit First should be:

If your revenue is growing, don’t assume everything is fine.

That’s often the most dangerous stage.

The goal isn’t just growth.

The goal is a profitable, sustainable business that works for you — not one that traps you in stress, debt, and constant firefighting.

If you’d like help implementing Profit First properly, feel free to reach out.

📩 [email protected]

Until next week, keep putting Profit First.

Stephen Edwards
Profit First Accountant and Business Coach
Gro Profit First Accountants

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