Brian Carmody, aka “The Profit Finder,” will show you where your business is leaking profit. After leading his own manufacturing company to the Inc. 5000 List three times, and then through the pandemic, he and his leadership team lowered their break-even point by a whopping 80% (without layoffs). His company grew DESPITE paid ads and marketing—not because of them. Now, using “Profit Acceleration Through Compound Growth,” Brian coaches others for similar results. His mission: To find life-changing income inside your business without using paid ads.
Brian Carmody, Business Coach – Corporate Trainer
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Are there any other ukulele players around here? I’ve been playing since Christmas 2022 and I’m obsessed. It’s a great way to unwind at the end of the day.
I was raised by a Special Forces Vietnam Veteran-turned cable splicer for the phone company (the guys you see climbing telephone poles) and a mother that worked in a high school cafeteria. Neither went to college but worked so hard so that my brother and I could. They hoped we would go out and live more comfortably than they did.
My father inspired me to work hard, do well and do better, while my mother taught me, not by preaching but simply by example, that true contentment and fulfillment comes not from wealth and public accolades but how you love and care for the person right in front of you.
By following their lessons, I attracted and grew up with life-long friends that I am still close to today. I live with my fiancé, an entrepreneurial Life Coach who inspires me (and keeps me on my toes) daily, her two wickedly-smart and funny teens, and our two dogs.
My own three daughters are in their early and mid-twenties doing amazing things in the world. Even with the extraordinary love my parents and friends showed me, it was my daughters who taught me just how deep love can be mined in the heart. I had no idea until they came into my life.
This is who I am.
What inspired you to start The Profit Finders?
Ok, this is the part where I tell you what I do.
After serving four years on active duty in the US Army Medical Service Corps, and another 16 years in corporate America including the Fortune 100, I accepted an equity position in a small regional manufacturing company in 2015, to serve as its President. Based in New Hampshire, the company makes height-adjustable desks for corporate office furniture needs, and a healthcare charting and consult desk for doctors.
We grew our company from serving small companies within a 50-mile radius, to nationwide sales and distribution. We made the Inc. 5000 list three times, and we tripled revenue. Through the pandemic shutdown and after, we survived and only had to let go of one employee.
We lowered our monthly break-even point by a whopping 76%. So we grew our revenue and profitability, most would say, “pretty dramatically,” both in a good economy and in the pandemic recession. And we were especially hit hard because we make office furniture. As the world knows, many offices migrated to remote and hybrid work. So our market shrank in a major way.
And we had all of that revenue and profit growth while paying advertising, marketing, and PR agencies that produced zero results for us. When I say “zero” I’m not exaggerating. All of the paid ads and PR we bought for print and digital produced no sales.
So when I looked back at what worked and what didn’t I realized that while we’ve all been hit with an avalanche of promotion from marketing and advertising “experts,” what actually worked for us were the strategies we had control over. We looked internally, inside our company, and executed strategies that cost us nothing but our time (and sometimes not even that). That’s when I realized there are ways to grow without gambling on marketing, advertising, and PR. Not that those three things never work, but far too often businesses try them prematurely.
So now I bring a system called “Profit Acceleration Through Compound Growth” to other companies so that they can realize similar results and preserve the cash that they would have spent on advertising.
The Profit Finders finds your leaking profit. And every business is leaking profit. The bigger the business, the more cash left on the table.
How do you differentiate your business from other companies that offer similar services?
Any one of us can look in our email inbox or our Linked In messages right now and find several people claiming that they can “10x our leads.” All we need to do is hire them to… fill in the blank. That “fill in the blank” is the one tactic that “expert” specializes in. It could be SEO, blogging, cold outreach email campaigns, social media and PPC ads…whatever it is they specialize in. We have a saying in the US; “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
That’s what is happening to us all now. We’re bombarded by people with hammers. They tell me my business needs their “specific tactic” to create life-changing income, and yet they haven’t even had a conversation with me, or better yet a deep-dive analysis with me to understand my goals, my current structure, or my challenges.
No thank you.
The Profit Finders process is to talk with you to perform a tailored assessment of your business, and your personal goals and situation. Only then can we determine which tool will help you get from “A to B.”
We have 40 Profit Strategies that we can teach to business owners and corporate executives. We do this through one-on-coaching, group coaching, or corporate training. (I personally love the corporate training solution for larger companies because it is the fastest way for them to accelerate profitability through the power of compound growth. With tens or hundreds of employees learning new profit strategies, you can imagine the compound effect this has when each one implements even one of these strategies in their own piece of the business.)
And don’t assume those 40 Profit Acceleration Strategies are all about marketing and advertising. They are not. In fact, most are not. We teach strategies to lower overhead and cost of goods sold (COGS) too, as well as joint ventures, expanding product and service lines, cross-selling, event chains, and many more. Isn’t that an encouraging and hopeful message, that you can grow your business without gambling on expensive marketing and advertising? I love spreading this good news.
So that is one of the biggest differences working with us. We first seek to understand your business, and then we reach into our tool box and apply up to 40 different profit acceleration strategies. And we don’t rely on just one.
We use the law of compound growth to drive small improvements across multiple areas of a business. The law of compound growth turns these small impacts into major results. We’ll never ask you to lay down a stack of cash on ads and let it ride “while we test and tweak the message.” We don’t treat your business like a casino.
What are some of the most common challenges businesses face when it comes to increasing profits, and how do you help them overcome those challenges?
Business leaders come to us conditioned to ask, “What are we going to do first to get more leads?” The marketplace has trained them to think this way. What we often need to do is show them that their business needs some foundational adjustments first. Fix those so that when we do drive leads to your business, they will have a good chance of converting into clients or customers. You don’t spend money on a new sunroom addition when your home’s foundation has a crack and the rain is leaking inside. You fix the foundation first and add the sunroom later.
For example, most businesses don’t have a market dominating position or a compelling offer. We coach them through crafting these foundational Profit Strategies first because these will do the conversion for you when you get them right.
A market dominating position gets your target market to think of you as “the only” instead of just “the best.” You want to be the obvious choice. Far too many businesses hire SEO, blog writers, email marketers, and social media strategists to drive eyeballs to their website only to lose them there because the prospect can’t see why the business can help them, why it is the obvious choice, or what makes their offer so compelling that they don’t want to leave.
Customers buy based on value, not price. They buy on price when you don’t give them anything else with which they can compare you to your competition. So, your Market Dominating Position (MDP) and your Compelling Offer can act as a one-two punch that positions your company in the minds of new and existing customers as having the most value in your category.
Get that right first.
And then is it time for paid ads? Usually not.
The next step would be to try free (and way more fun and fulfilling) profit strategies like identifying an event chain that happens before and after customers come to you. Then build joint venture affiliate agreements with the companies upstream and downstream from your business. This will create a predictable flow of leads to you, and because your MDP and Compelling Offer are strong, conversions happen quickly with little effort.
In short, think of paid advertising strategies as an amplifier to try once you’ve established your solid foundation of predictable lead flow and revenue.
Every time we help a client cement a successful Profit Acceleration Strategy, we document the workflow so that your business becomes a collection of systems. This kind of documentation is what really makes your business valuable to buyers if you ever decide to sell it.
What about The Profit Finders are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the fact that I walk my talk daily.
I am still the President of the manufacturing company I mentioned earlier, while I also serve as the Chief Profit Finder for The Profit Finders. I’m able to do this because my team and I at our manufacturing company have created systems that work with very little input from me now.
We literally get sales while I sleep or go on vacation, and while I’m serving clients through The Profit Finders. This is what I want to bring to the exhausted, stressed-out business leader who is no longer having fun leading their company. With systemization comes more opportunities. Running your business can be as fun as playing Monopoly with your friends. I find it so rewarding to show people that this is possible for them too.
And some of my favorite side benefits of The Profit Finders is the network I’ve built. Not only am I able to serve clients by making their core business more profitable, but I’m also able to help them in other ways, usually through my connections in commercial lending and private equity.
For example, I’m helping a new primary care medical clinic get the investment it needs to scale to 300 locations. And I’m helping an investor raise funds to develop 60 acres of land he owns into a green fuel cell and data center project. These projects are half a billion dollars in value each. I love being able to introduce my clients into these kinds of opportunities. We have a lot of fun playing the game at this level.
I know you’ve written books about your profit strategies. Why aren’t you selling your latest on Amazon?
I know it sounds strange on the surface, to write a book, and then not put it out there for sale. Many people reading this would probably ask, “Then why write the book?”
Here’s why.
I’m not interested in putting one more business book out there on Amazon. Even though, sure, I may be walking away from potential book sales, I’m using my book for a different purpose.
My latest book “Your Business Profit Rescue Guide” is 90 pages, and 10 chapters. Each chapter explains and gives examples of a specific profit strategy.
I use the book as a personal gift. I like the feeling of emailing a PDF copy of it to someone I know and being able to say to them, “Check out chapter 6 in particular. I think it applies to the challenge you told me about, and I think it will give you the changes you seek if you implement that strategy.”
I think it comes back to the lesson I learned from my mother, which I mentioned at the beginning of this interview. Help the person right in front of you. That’s how we make our most meaningful impact in this life we have.
So that’s the approach I’m taking with this book, and I’m leaving the mass media hoopla to others. I want to personally know or meet the people I am helping and learning from.
Readers who are interested in learning more about my profit strategies can find them at my two websites, https://www.briancarmody.me and https://theprofitfinders.com.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Youtube, or visit my website for more info!
