The Real Cost of a Million-Pound Business That No One Talks About
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 10
- 6 min read
Lauren Lea Fenn-Ellis, founder and CEO of OBM Associates, leads a globally trusted business management agency. Named a Top 10 Disruptive Entrepreneur, she helps founders scale with clarity, strategy, and operational excellence.
When you first start a business, everyone’s quick to celebrate the little wins with you, popping the champagne when you land your first client and toasting to your first £1k in profit. Excitement and motivation fuel those early days and can keep you working late into the night as you chase the next milestone, the next goal, the next big thing. After all, you’ve built something from scratch, entirely for yourself. You’ve given yourself employment, and what’s not to like about that?
But here’s the part no one tells you. A million-pound business isn’t automatically a highly profitable one.
I’ve seen businesses turning over seven figures with the same profit margins as those making half (or even a quarter) of that. One is lean and sustainable. The other is bloated and burning out its owner. On paper, both could be making a million, but one is costing far more than it’s giving back.
And one day, you realise, maybe you’re chasing the surface-level number without asking what it’s really costing you.
We’ve all been there, and if you haven’t yet, I’m sorry to say it’s coming.
More money, but at what cost?
There comes a time in every business owner's journey when they are forced to make a decision.
Do you continue along the path you’ve carved out for yourself, creating employment for yourself and growing your business at a steady rate, or do you scale up and employ the support of a wider team?
Some will remain firmly in the first category, comfortable with the business they’ve built and the potential to reach a limiting capacity at which they can work. Others are dreamers, keen to embrace the potential growth that comes with more resources, more personnel, and a wider reach.
Both could make a million pounds, with the latter likely to push beyond their limits to reach that surface-level financial goal. But at what cost?
What your business coach doesn’t tell you
A team could help you to run a million-pound business, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever see a million pounds in the bank.
Business expenses, salaries, pension contributions, and more will soon make a serious dent in that pot, leaving you with, let’s say, £300k in profit.
Now let’s look at a smaller-scale enterprise, one that makes £500k as opposed to a million. They may not take as much over the course of the year, but their outgoings are significantly smaller as a result of their leaner operations. They, too, could make £300k in profit.
Here’s a rough example of how that might look:
Category | Million-Pound Business | Leaner Business |
Revenue | £1,000,000 | £500,000 |
Team Costs | £400,000 | £120,000 |
Marketing & PR | £120,000 | £40,000 |
Systems & Ops | £80,000 | £20,000 |
Other Expenses | £100,000 | £20,000 |
Total Expenses | £700,000 | £200,000 |
Profit | £300,000 | £300,000 |
What we’re saying is that a million-pound business sounds nice, but to make that a reality, the outgoings are significantly higher. One dent in that business model, and it could all come crumbling down. And that’s, of course, assuming that everything works as it should, without layering grief and team challenges on your plate.
Despite all this, though, business coaches are out there all over LinkedIn, touting that bigger is better and that earning more money is the one and only indicator of success.
It’s time to change the narrative
Financial growth is, in short, just one part of running a business, and really, it doesn’t mean much.
I recently met with someone who had a great business model on paper. They were taking £100k in revenue every month, and to someone from the outside, it looked like they had the world at their feet.
But behind the scenes, the business was broken, from the founder down to the newest member of the team. They had built a thriving business, but in doing so had destroyed everything that had driven their passion in the first place.
Ultimately, they scaled back, taking less but getting more out of their business on a personal level.
And it’s this that we feel more business owners should be talking about.
Are you facing a business tipping point?
Whether you’re there or not, being able to recognise the signs of a spiralling business model is, we think, a real make-or-break moment.
Are you taking in more revenue every month, but seeing hardly anything in the bank? Is your growing team becoming stagnant amid backlogged decisions and processes?
Has recruitment become a crutch that doesn’t seem to be propping you up like it used to? Have you had enough? It might be time to stop pushing through “for just another month” and instead work on a new foundation and structure.
3 actions that support sustainable scaling
1. Audit profitability as well as revenue
It’s important that you know where your profit margins lie, how much money is coming in, and how much is going out.
Are there areas of the business where you’ve overspent? Are you getting a good return on investment wherever you spend your time as well as your money?
Top tip: Look at each product or service you offer and do a profit analysis on each. This will show you where your profit margins lie per product.
2. Look ahead, not back
It’s so easy to look at the website you’ve built or the team set-up you’ve got and conclude that it has always worked before and so will continue to work.
Not only does your business change when you scale, but the industry is always changing, customer and client demands are always changing, team priorities shift, and even the platforms where your business might be discovered are changing.
Business mapping needs to be done with an eye to the future if you want to ensure sustainable growth.
Top tip: Identify three areas that can be improved with a new system or delegation.
3. Identify your priorities
Once you’ve given yourself permission to view success as something more than simply “earning a million pounds”, you’ll uncover a world of business priorities and goals you might not have known you had.
It’s crucial that, as a business owner, you know what you want to achieve. It could be money, but it can also be freedom, a business that has a positive impact on the world around you, a legacy, or something else.
Remember why you built the business and build on your goals from there. And ask yourself, has the act of reaching for the next milestone replaced the art of building something I love?
If it has, it’s time to take a step back.
Is that million pounds worth the cost?
If you take just one thing from this post, let it be this. If you want to build a million-pound business, then do it! It’s such an amazing goal, and achieving it is incredible.
But don’t let that financial goal leave you on the brink of burnout, no longer running a business that serves you in other areas of your life. It’s not the only thing that matters, and the chances are that a million-pound business isn’t real (at least not from a financial sense).
You can’t grow sustainably and with intention if you don’t have the right systems and foundations to hold you up. We only wish more people knew this, and more business coaches shared this!
If this post resonated with you and you want more advice on how to prioritise goals within your business, subscribe to my newsletter and get actionable tips and inspiration to help you build a business that runs without you.
Read more from Lauren Lea Fenn-Ellis
Lauren Lea Fenn-Ellis, Agency Founder and Fractional COO
Lauren Lea Fenn-Ellis is the founder and CEO of OBM Associates, a globally trusted business management agency supporting high-growth entrepreneurs. With nearly two decades of operational leadership experience, Lauren and her team partner with visionary founders to scale intentionally through strategic systems, high-performing teams, and operations designed for clarity, efficiency, and scale. Named one of the Top 10 Disruptive Entrepreneurs, her work turns operational friction into focused momentum. For founders who are ready to step out of the day-to-day and into confident, sustainable leadership, OBM Associates builds the structure that sets them free.
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