Some businesses don't have a revenue problem. They have a control problem. The money comes in, the work gets done, and underneath it the cost base quietly runs the place, because no one is holding it to account.
This is one of those. A mining infrastructure and contracted-services business servicing Tier 1 miners. Strong top line, a respected name on site, plenty of work. And a cost base that had never been gripped, on contract terms that had never been renegotiated, with no P&L or cashflow visibility to manage any of it from.
The brief was simple to state and harder to do: get commercial control, and prove it inside a quarter. What follows is the sequence, the mechanism, and the numbers it produced, anonymised by industry.
The situation
Strong revenue, no grip on the commercials
From the outside the business looked healthy. Revenue was strong and steady, the contracts were live, and the operational side delivered. The problem sat one layer down, where the money is actually made or lost.
The cost base had grown with the business but had never been challenged. Overhead had accumulated (roles, systems, suppliers, standing commitments) and no one had ever sat down and asked which of it was earning its keep. The contracts with the Tier 1 miners had been signed and then left alone, their terms drifting further from commercial reality with every cycle.
Worse, there was nothing to manage from. No clean P&L. No cashflow forecast. No line of sight on gross margin by contract. Decisions were being made on instinct and bank balance, because the numbers that would have made them obvious didn't exist in a usable form.
This is more common than it looks. Businesses that win work on capability and reputation can carry a loose cost base for years, because the revenue covers it. The slack never shows up as a crisis. It shows up as margin that should be there and isn't, and as a founder who senses the business is leaking but can't point to where. Strong revenue is a brilliant disguise for weak commercial control.
You can't cut what you can't see. Before a single cost was touched, the work started with a current-state review, the same starting point as the Operating Diagnostic on the packages page, mapping the cost base, the contract terms and the cash position into one honest picture. Get that wrong and you cut muscle instead of fat. Get it right and the ~$1M is sitting there in plain sight, waiting to be removed.
The intervention
The first 90 days
The work ran as a deliberate sequence, not a scattergun. Each step set up the next: see the business clearly, agree the plan, install the rhythm to drive it, build the numbers to steer by, then go hard at the two biggest levers, contracts and systems.
A current-state diagnostic. The starting point was an honest picture of the business: where the money came from, where it went, what the contracts actually committed to, and how cash moved through the year. No assumptions, no sacred cows.
A one-page strategic plan. One page, on purpose. The handful of priorities that mattered for the quarter, named owners against each, and a clear definition of what done looked like. Short enough that everyone could hold it in their head.
A weekly leadership cadence. A standing weekly rhythm with the leadership team (same time, same structure) to drive the priorities, surface what was stuck, and keep the plan moving instead of drifting.
P&L and cashflow forecasting. The numbers got built into something you could actually run the business on: a P&L you could trust and a forward cashflow forecast, so decisions were made on commercial reality rather than the bank balance on the day.
Renegotiation of key contracts and systems. With the picture clear and the rhythm holding, the two heaviest levers came last, the core contracts with the miners, and the systems and supplier commitments that had quietly become a tax on the business.
You can't cut what you can't see. The diagnostic is what turns a hunch about cost into a list of decisions.
The result
What came out of it
Inside the first 90 days, approximately $1M of annualised overhead was removed from the business. Cost that had been sitting in the base for years, gripped and taken out once there was visibility to do it safely. The chart below indexes the before and after; the only real number is the reduction itself.
The systems renewal told the same story in miniature. A core systems contract was up for renewal at a number that had never been tested. Once it was challenged on commercial terms, the renewal landed at a 70% saving against where it was heading.
And the contracts themselves moved. With clean numbers in hand and a clear view of what the work actually cost to deliver, a multi-million-dollar contract variation was secured. Value the business had been leaving on the table because it had never been in a position to ask for it.
Three numbers, one cause. None of them came from working the business harder. They came from seeing it clearly, then having the discipline to act on what the numbers showed.
The method
Why 90 days, not a year
A cost base this loose doesn't need a twelve-month review to fix. It needs someone to grip it quickly, before the analysis becomes its own form of delay. A 90-day block of performance and margin discipline is built for exactly that: tight enough to force decisions, long enough to make them stick.
The sequence compounds. The diagnostic makes the cuts safe. The one-page plan and weekly cadence keep the work moving instead of stalling in committee. The P&L and cashflow turn every renegotiation into a fact-based conversation rather than a guess. By the time the contracts and systems came up, the groundwork had already been laid, so the heavy levers moved fast.
It also protects the founder. A quarter is a commitment you can see the end of. There is no twelve-month consulting bill running while the business waits to find out whether the work lands. The standard is plain: visible commercial control and money back in the business inside 90 days. If it isn't producing, you know early (at a boundary you can stop at) not a year and a salary later.
And it leaves something behind. The cuts are the headline, but the rhythm is what holds. The one-page plan, the weekly cadence and the P&L and cashflow forecast don't pack up at day 90; they stay, and they keep the cost base honest after the engagement ends. That is the difference between a one-off saving and durable commercial discipline. Here, that meant roughly $1M of annualised overhead gone, a 70% saving banked, and a multi-million-dollar variation secured, not in a year, in a quarter.
Strong revenue had hidden the problem for years. Ninety days of execution discipline is what made it visible, and then made it gone.
Questions founders ask
Common questions
How do I know which of our contracts are losing money?
- Report gross margin by contract, not just a company P&L. Allocate labour, plant, subcontract and direct overhead to each contract, compare actuals with the rates you are paid, and review it at least monthly.