Profit Under Pressure: The CFO’s Guide to Surviving Inflation and Staying Cash-Positive

1. OpEx Audit – Trim Waste Without Sacrificing Delivery

As inflation drives up operating costs across the board—from software to service providers to delivery expenses—what used to be “reasonable overhead” can quietly become profit erosion. Most founders don’t notice the leak until cash feels tight. This isn’t about cost-cutting for the sake of cutting. It’s about protecting profit margins without decreasing quality or weakening the business.

It starts with an OpEx audit: a focused review of your operating expenses to determine what’s driving profit and what’s just dragging it down.

Critical Expenses To Review

1. SaaS Tools: SaaS tools are notorious for creeping costs:

• • Monthly upgrades you don’t needs.

  • Features you’re not using

  • Tools with overlapping functionality

2. Contractors, Retainers & Delivery Costs

When revenue grows, businesses often throw people at problems—adding project managers, VAs, marketers, etc. That may work fine when profit margins are high, but in inflationary periods, every hour paid needs to return value.

Ask Yourself:

• • What roles are tied directly to client delivery or revenue generation?

  • Are there overlapping responsibilities or unclear scopes?

  • Are you overpaying for low-leverage work?

  • Focus on roles that feel “nice to have” but aren’t moving the needle in profit, delivery, or client results.

3. Recurring Expenses That Don’t Scale With You

Some expenses were helpful early on but now deliver no ROI at your current stage (low-level masterminds, old tech systems, redundant services, etc.).

Ask Yourself:

• • Does this still match our current model?

  • Would I re-buy this today knowing what I know now?

How to Conduct An OpEx Audit

1. 1. List every tool, its monthly/annual cost, who uses it, and what core function it serves.
   2. Answer the Question: How much of an impact would removing this cost have on my business? 
   3. Break every OpEx line item into three buckets:
      
      
      • Essential (must-have for revenue or delivery)
      • ROI-Positive (supports growth or measurable leverage)
      • Nice-to-Have (subjective value, no measurable ROI)
   4. Then, decide to keep it, cut it, consolidate or replace it with a more cost-effective option

This gives you a cash-conscious, profit-protective framework for making financial decisions—not from fear, but from strategy. Your business doesn’t need to be bigger to be more profitable. It needs to be leaner, more intentional, and built for efficiency at scale. The OpEx audit is the first move in reclaiming cash without breaking what’s working.

2. Profit Protection Scenario Planning – Know What You’d Cut Before It’s Too Late

When the economy shifts, the businesses that survive aren’t just the most profitable—they’re the most prepared.

Most service founders have a “default future”: a single set of financial expectations built on current revenue and costs. But in an inflationary environment, that default can change quickly—and if you only have one plan, you’re forced to make big decisions under pressure.

Inflation doesn’t usually break a business all at once. It eats away at profit slowly—through rising delivery costs, inflated software fees, and team expenses that no longer match your revenue model.

By the time many founders notice it, profit margins are thin, cash is tight, and decisions are being made under pressure.

Profit Protection Scenario Planning is your playbook for that exact situation—built in advance. It’s how smart operators prepare to protect profits before rising costs force their hand.

Why This Matters:

• • Inflation increases cost inputs unpredictably (team, tools, tech).

  • Waiting until cash is tight to decide what to cut leads to rushed, emotion-driven decisions.

  • Pre-deciding how you’ll adjust your OpEx gives you control, speed, and confidence—when everyone else is scrambling.

With scenario planning, you shift from reaction mode to proactive margin protection. This is your profit defense strategy. Designed in advance. Executed with clarity—not emotion.

How to Build a Profit Protection Plan:

Step 1: Calculate Your Safe to Spend Number

Your Safe to Spend number is the maximum amount of monthly operating expenses your business can carry while still hitting your target net profit margin.

It’s not just a budget—it’s your financial boundary.

Formula: Safe to Spend = Revenue × (1 – Target Net Profit Margin)

Example:

• • Monthly revenue = $150,000

  • Target profit margin = 30%

  • Safe to Spend = $150,000 × (1 – 0.30) = $105,000

That means if your monthly OpEx rises above $105K, your profit margin dips below 30%. This is the line you plan around.

Step 2: Compare It to Your Current Spending (Your Baseline)

Before you plan for rising costs, look at where you stand today.

• • Are you already spending close to your Safe to Spend number?

  • Are you above it—and unintentionally bleeding margin?

  • Or are you well below and have some buffer?

Your Baseline is your actual current OpEx.

Your Safe to Spend is the max you should spend to maintain profitability.

Step 3: Build Cost-Based Scenarios

Now that you know the threshold, create a simple plan for what you’d do if costs rise beyond it. Here are three inflation-focused scenarios to build around:

Step 4: Decide What You’d Cut or Adjust in Each Scenario

For each cost scenario, pre-plan what to expenses to cut or adjust:

• • What gets cut immediately? Non-essential tools, underutilized services, or anything with no clear ROI.

  • What gets paused or renegotiated? Contractor hours, software tiers, delivery complexity, retainer roles.

  • What gets simplified? Where can delivery be streamlined without hurting results?

  • What stays protected no matter what? Core delivery systems, revenue-driving team members, critical infrastructure.

This removes emotion from the decision-making process. You’re not guessing under pressure—you’re executing a plan built with a clear margin target in mind.

Most businesses fail because their expenses keep rising while they delay hard decisions.

This plan gives you speed, clarity, and confidence. You’ll know exactly when to act—and what to do—if your cost structure starts to creep beyond what your margin can hold.

“Profit protection isn’t reactive—it’s pre-decided.”

3. Cash Signal Dashboard – Track the Right Numbers & Stay Ahead of Costs

Most founders rely on end-of-month reports to understand their financial position—but by then, any overspending or margin erosion has already happened.

In inflationary conditions, you can’t afford to wait. You need a lightweight, real-time pulse check on your financial health—built around the numbers that actually impact margin and cash flow.

This isn’t about obsessing over every dollar—it’s about tracking the right few numbers consistently so you never get blindsided.

What to Track Weekly

Weekly Spending

Conduct weekly money reviews to check how much you spent this week—and where. Rising costs tend to creep in quietly: increased hours, surprise renewals, small delivery overages.

The goal is to catch overspending early—before it turns into a profit leak.

• • Did we spend more than expected?

  • Are any costs trending upward that need review?

  • Are we staying lean without sacrificing delivery?

Cash Balance

Track your current cash on hand each week—not just in your bank account, but what’s actually available to run the business. You need to know your cash position at all times.

• • Is cash holding steady, or shrinking week over week?

  • Are you building a buffer—or eating into one?

  • Can you confidently cover the next few weeks of expenses?

Unpaid Invoices / Aged Accounts Receivable

If clients are paying slower—or skipping payment cycles altogether—that creates strain quickly, especially when costs are rising. Track this weekly so you can take action before delayed cash flow disrupts stability.

• • Are invoices sitting longer than they used to?

  • Is your AR aging past 30 or 60 days?

  • Has your follow-up process slipped?

How to Make This Easy

• • Set aside 10–15 minutes once a week to check these three numbers.
  • Use a simple spreadsheet, Notion doc, or dashboard—whatever helps you stay consistent.

The goal isn’t reporting. It’s visibility. Inflation rarely creates sudden emergencies. It creates slow, invisible pressure on your profit margins and cash. This 3-number dashboard gives you a reliable, no-fluff way to stay ahead of that pressure—so you can respond early, not react late.

The most financially resilient founders aren’t the ones who check more numbers—they’re the ones who check the right ones.

4. Profitable Offer Review – Lock in Margin, Kill Scope Creep

When most founders think about protecting profit, they look at top-line revenue or external costs. But one of the most overlooked sources of margin loss is inside your own offers.

Delivery bloat, team overextension, and scope creep quietly eat away at profit—even when sales are strong.

A Profitable Offer Review helps you evaluate how well your offers are performing from a financial perspective—not just in terms of client results or revenue, but in how efficiently they convert effort into cash.

Why This Matters Now

In an inflation-heavy economy, your cost of delivery may have increased—without you noticing.

• • Contractors or team members may be logging more hours than they used to

  • Clients may expect more access or support than your original scope allowed

  • Fulfillment tools or systems may now be more expensive to maintain

If you haven’t revisited your offers through a financial lens, chances are you’re carrying hidden cost burden inside what you’re selling.

How to Conduct a Profitable Offer Review

1. Recalculate Your Delivery Cost Per Offer

Start by looking at what it actually costs to deliver each of your core offers today—including:

• • Labor (team or contractors)

  • Tools or tech directly tied to delivery

  • Time or access you’re personally giving

Are those costs increasing while pricing has stayed flat?

2. Identify Scope Creep

Look at what you said you’d deliver—and what you’re actually delivering.

• • Has the client experience expanded beyond the original promise?

  • Are you regularly doing extra check-ins, customizations, or “small favors” that aren’t accounted for?

  • Has access to you or your team increased over time?

Even small over-deliveries compound across clients and crush margin quietly.

3. Audit Client Load vs. Margin Per Client

Are certain clients taking up significantly more time or energy than others—for the same or lower price point?

You don’t need to fire clients. But you may need to:

• • Re-scope deliverables

  • Set tighter boundaries

  • Phase out offers that create volume but not profit

What to Look For

How to Act On What You Find

• • Tighten the scope of your high-effort offers

  • Streamline delivery—automate, templatize, or remove complexity

  • Restructure offers that no longer make financial sense under your current cost structure

  • Phase out or replace low-margin services with more scalable alternatives

This isn’t about doing less for clients—it’s about designing delivery to match the current economic reality, and your business goals. If your cost of delivery has gone up but your offers haven’t evolved, you’re paying the price—in time, team capacity, and profit.

A Profitable Offer Review helps you regain control. It ensures the way you deliver aligns with the margin you need to run a stable, scalable business.

Rising costs don’t always show up on your P&L. Sometimes they’re buried in your calendar, your team’s hours, and your scope creep.

In Summary

Profit doesn’t disappear overnight. It gets chipped away—through slow overspending, unmonitored costs, bloated delivery, and decisions made too late.

These four strategies are built to help you catch that drift early. So you can respond with clarity, not reaction.

Because staying profitable in high-cost conditions isn’t about working harder or selling more. It’s about knowing your numbers, adjusting fast, and protecting what you’ve already built.

The strongest businesses aren’t the ones that avoid pressure. They’re the ones that stay profitable under it.

Want To See Where Your Business Is Most Exposed To Inflation

Rising Costs, Or Profit Erosion?