Introduction

The whole point of starting a business is to build a machine that generates revenue and creates wealth, so you can stop trading time for money.

If you are an entrepreneur, business owner, or founder who has laid the foundation of your business and are now looking to grow, scale, and increase your profits - you've come to the right place.

This is the guide to growing your revenue, increasing profitability, and creating a business that you can scale (and even potentially exit).

However, that is much easier to say than it is to do. The fact is that 91% of all businesses fail in the first 10 years. This staggering statistic had me questioning why. Was it the wrong business model, a declining market, just bad timing, or was it the founder?

I started to dive in and search to find all the reasons why businesses fail. This led me to a four-year research project with data from thousands of entrepreneurs and their businesses. I was determined to find out if there was a clear correlation in the research.

Turns out, there is. And the reason 9 out of every 10 businesses close their doors before their 10th anniversary may surprise you.

It isn't because they don't have a great idea, or a great product.

It isn't because they don't have a brilliant, Ivy League-educated founder.

It isn't because they didn't master the latest marketing trend or decode the latest social algorithm.

And it isn't due to lack of connections, lack of network, or lack of followers.

The number-one reason businesses fail is summed up in three words: lack of profit.

If we expand just slightly on that, the research uncovered these top three reasons: lack of profit, declining sales revenue, and lack of cash flow or funding - aka not enough money.

With this information, I was curious and posed a second question. If we know why 91% of all businesses fail in their first 10 years, can we identify what the 9% who succeed do differently?

Can we pinpoint, and more importantly duplicate, the patterns of successful, sustainable businesses - and their founders who build them - in order to stack the odds for success in our favor?

The answer is yes, we can. And that is the crux of this book.

Becoming part of the 9% is going to require taking an honest look at your decisions, behaviors, and habits. It's going to require the understanding that what you know now might not be the knowledge that you need to get where you want to go because some of the skills and habits that got you here won't get you there.

Building a successful business will require different talents, strategies, and skills to go from startup to growth, to scale, to optimization, and to exit. The skills you developed that helped you start in business are not the same skills you need to sustain in business.

The sooner entrepreneurs understand and apply this principle, the faster you can achieve whatever it is you are after.

What Is This Book Really About?

This is not a flashy book. It's a foundational book. I won't come at you with just theory and concepts. I'll give you tools, principles, and strategies needed to grow, scale, and even exit.

Because if there's only one thing that's true in business, it's that your ability to increase revenue, and ultimately your profit is - and always will be - a primary function and should be a key focus for founders and entrepreneurs.

Your success hinges on your ability to acquire customers, to generate sales, and to maintain profitability, consistently. Growing your revenue and increasing your profitability is not about working harder; it's about working smarter by identifying and implementing key strategies that have a direct impact on your bottom line.

In this book, we're going to dive into all of the details and intricacies of exactly how to do that.

During my 26 years of experience, I've built, scaled, and sold multiple successful businesses in numerous industries. I have also had the pleasure of working with businesses of all sizes - from those making their first couple hundred thousand in revenue, to those doing $200 million, going after an IPO, and creating a unicorn.

The most fascinating thing is that regardless of where you are in your current growth cycle, the principles of creating a scalable, sustainable, and sellable venture remain virtually the same. There are endless ways to architect your build, but when it comes to growth and scale, everything gets boiled down to a handful of core principles.

No matter where you are in your build, all of us entrepreneurs have one seemingly simple thing in common: we want to increase our revenue, keep more of the money we make, and reclaim our freedom in the process. I say seemingly simple because simple doesn't equal easy. If it was easy, more than 9% of us would succeed at doing so.

So whether you're scaling your company, just starting in business, or really ramping up your growth cycle - understanding how to increase your revenue, maintain profitability, and create a business that can sustain through the evident challenges that arise is essential to create your edge.

Starting a business is one thing, but consistently growing your revenue and maintaining profitability will require a completely different set of skills.

Throughout this book, we will explore key areas proven to drive business growth, and fundamental principles like expanding your customer base, enhancing average order value, boosting the frequency of purchases, strategically reducing costs (without compromising on quality or service), and how to measure and evaluate the critical revenue drivers in your business.

This book is not about quick fixes or overnight success. It's about applying consistent, focused efforts to strengthen the core aspects of your business. Whether you are looking to fine-tune your operations or need a complete overhaul on your finances, the insights shared here will give you the edge and secure your place within the 9%, making your success not just possible or probable, but predictable.

We are going to go deep in all the ways you can increase your revenue NOW, what levers you can pull to increase your profit NOW, and ultimately how to buy back your time and create more freedom NOW.

Who Am I to Help?

Well, here's the thing. If you want to learn from someone with an MBA or a PhD, or a dozen other letters after their name, that's not me. I don't have a business degree, I didn't come from a wealthy or educated family, and quite honestly I don't use perfect grammar or sentence structure (drives my editor nuts!). I'm not a writer, I'm not a professional speaker, and I'm not some online marketer. I'm an entrepreneur - just like you.

I've taken risks, I've had huge successes and massive failures, and have figured out a lot over the last two and half decades. What I lack in institutional education, I make up for in real-world application.

I didn't invent a market-disrupting idea, I didn't reengineer an industry, and I didn't perfectly time a vertical roll-up. Instead, I simply had the willingness to try, the commitment to continue, and enough leverage to keep showing up, even when I didn't want to - and the beautiful part is that these are all things you can do, too. All these things are within your ability and your control. Because success, my friend, is far less about what resources you have, and far more about how resourceful you are willing to be.

So whether you read my words, hear me speak, or tune into The Candy Valentino Show, you know that I don't teach from books, from theory, or from regurgitated information I heard from someone on the internet. I teach from experience, from exploration, from trying and failing, from being relentless in the pursuit of knowledge and growth. And if I'm really good at any one thing, it's actually just identifying patterns, understanding numbers, and simplifying complex topics. That's it. No earth-shattering inventions or genius IQ here.

Prior to all the businesses, the investments, and the books, I was born in a single-wide, little white trailer parked on the outskirts of a small town. My parents, teenagers when I was born, relied on government assistance to make ends meet. My early years were marked by the hardships of poverty and abuse. With no option for childcare, I spent my afternoons and evenings in my father's small auto repair shop, witnessing the struggles of entrepreneurship firsthand.

Most of the kids I knew had after-school routines of learning the mechanics of some sport, dance, or gymnastics. I, on the other hand, was learning the mechanics of small business - inside the walls of a greasy, grimy little garage. My mom cleaned houses, my dad turned wrenches (as he called it), and I witnessed the immense amount of hard work it takes to put food on the table.

I worked with my dad every day until I turned 16. Immediately after high school, recognizing that the traditional route of college would not fast-track me to where I needed to be, I secured an SBA loan with a six-week run-rate and launched my first brick-and-mortar venture.

My journey didn't stop with that first...